NEWS BRIEFS
Houston-area property sales rise year over year despite hurdles
BY GEORGE WIEBE
According to the HAR, the number of single-fam- ily homes on the market between $150,000- $249,999 decreased by 36.9% compared to last March. Meanwhile, homes between $500,000- $999,999 saw a 36.1% increase, the largest year- over-year growth of any price range. The average number of days a home spends on the market decreased from 46 in March 2021 to 38 in March of this year, according to the HAR. The total months of inventory—the estimated amount of time it would take to deplete property in the market—was at 1.3 months for single-family
RISING PRICES MEDIAN PRICE FOR SINGLE-FAMILY HOMES
Property sales in the Houston area increased 4.3% in March compared to the previous year, according to an April 13 news release from the Houston Association of Realtors. Despite a rise in interest rates and a 2.1% decrease in year-over-year housing supply, there is no indica- tion of a slowing housing market, the release said. “We are experiencing unprecedented market conditions in Houston with a frenetic pace of homebuying,” HAR Chair Jennifer Wauhob said in the release.
March 2021 $290K
March 2022 $335K
+15.5%
SOURCE: HOUSTON ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS/ COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
homes in March. A supply of six months of inven- tory is considered a “balanced market,” according to the National Association of Realtors.
Texas safety task force releases final Astroworld report
Missouri City police adopts 911 livestream
BY SOFIA GONZALES
many more taken to the hospital for critical injuries. The task force was created on Nov. 21 to create a list of concert safety recommendations. It identified gaps in planning that led to the escalation. The report said the use of an on-site command and control structure would have allowed for an authority to stop the concert to address safety concerns. The report said the chain of command must be clearly communicated and doc- umented. It said communication is key when seconds matter. The report said event pro- moters should identify poten- tially necessary emergency services and have those teams employed. The report also found a lack of permitting consis- tency and issued permitting
“CHAINOF COMMANDMUST BE CLEARLY COMMUNICATED ANDDOCUMENTED. COMMUNICATION IS KEYWHEN SECONDSMATTER.” THE FINAL ASTROWORLD REPORT
Governor Greg Abbott, alongside his Texas Task Force on Concert Safety, released the final report on concert safety in an effort to ensure another incident like Travis Scott’s Astroworld does not happen again. Scott, a musician raised in Mis- souri City, was the main headliner on the first day of the festival on Nov. 5, 2021. Hours before Scott took the stage, unticketed fans hopped the fence and broke down barricades to attend the event. During the concert, there were reports of injuries tied to crowd surges, overwhelming staff. The Houston Police Department initiated a self-response, the report said, which is what led to the decla- ration of a mass casualty event. The report said 10 people died due to the crowd compression, with
BY HUNTER MARROW
The Missouri City Police Department has begun livestreaming 911 emergency calls directly to officers in the field in real time, marking the first Texas police agency to adopt the technology, according to a March 31 news release fromMissouri City officials. The technology, called Live911, allows officers to hear the caller’s words and voice and is designed to provide a sense of urgency, details that might not be shared otherwise and immediate updates on the situation, according to the release. Live911 is designed to close the time gap between when 911 calls are received to when officers are dispatched by allowing officers to hear incoming 911 emergency calls in their geographical area, according to the release. The technology allows officers to obtain more information to devise a response plan.
recommendations. Other recommendations
included more training, prepar- ing for any foreseeable hazards, enforcing a code of conduct and analyzing the social media of the crowd and the artist in real time to detect a change in mood.
New risk ratingmeans changing flood insurance premiums
the shift would address “inequities in the existing pricing methodology,” that resulted in some households being overcharged for their policies while others were undercharged. The new regulation will cap increases for individual policies at 18%. According to FEMA’s fact sheets, under the old regulation, prices would increase “indefinitely.”
BY JISHNU NAIR
The National Flood Insurance Program allows for the purchase of federally-backed flood insurance, which is required for buildings in high flood-risk areas that have federally-backed loans. The Federal Emergency
Management Agency announced Risk Rating 2.0 on April 1, 2021, and put the first phase into effect for new policyholders on Oct. 1, 2021. As of April 1, all policyholders are now subject to the new rating model. In its announcement, FEMA said
On April 1, all existing flood insurance policies under the National Flood Insurance Program saw an update to their pricing methodology under a new risk evaluation system, Risk Rating 2.0.
PREMIUMPRICE CHANGES
As of April, FEMA’s pricing methodology for flood insurance changed to the Risk Rating 2.0 system, resulting in policy increases for most residents in five local ZIP codes.
SOURCES: MYCITY HOUSTON OPEN DATA, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY/ COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
77459
77478
77479
77489
77498
4.8% policies will decrease
3.6% policies will decrease
1.3% policies will decrease
4.4% policies will decrease
2.1% policies will decrease
95.4% policies will increase
96.5% policies will increase
98.8% policies will increase
95.6% policies will increase
97.9% policies will increase
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